Online Intensive Weekend Retreat
This intensive retreat is designed for those who have a deep interest in Truth and a strong dedication to the journey of spiritual awakening.
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The focus of the retreat will be deepening into the 'I am', with multiple daily silent sittings, guided meditations, meditations in movement and opportunities to ask questions. If you feel in your heart a call to discover the formless essence of your Being and to surrender fully to that, you are invited to join us for this intensive weekend. |
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Retreat Schedule
This retreat is designed to enable participants from all over the world to join. You will receive downloadable recordings of each guided meditation and meeting session with Louise so if you are unable to attend any sessions live due to the time difference, you are invited to watch the recording of the missed session at a time convenient for you during the weekend.
There are multiple silent sittings and movement meditation with music sessions to accommodate all time zones.
You are not expected to attend all of these sessions, only those relevant for your time zone. The recommendation is 2 silent sittings and 1 movement meditation with music per day, in addition to the sessions with Louise.
There are multiple silent sittings and movement meditation with music sessions to accommodate all time zones.
You are not expected to attend all of these sessions, only those relevant for your time zone. The recommendation is 2 silent sittings and 1 movement meditation with music per day, in addition to the sessions with Louise.
Silent sittings and movement meditations with music sessions will be hosted by a team member.
Participation instructions for these sessions will be given during the welcome meeting.
Silent sittings and movement meditations with music sessions will not be recorded.
Participation instructions for these sessions will be given during the welcome meeting.
Silent sittings and movement meditations with music sessions will not be recorded.
Click on a time zone to view the retreat schedule.
Booking
Regular rate: The price of the retreat.
Sponsor rate: Includes a contribution to a Scholarship Fund, enabling those with financial difficulties to attend the retreat. Your support is greatly appreciated.
Sponsor rate: Includes a contribution to a Scholarship Fund, enabling those with financial difficulties to attend the retreat. Your support is greatly appreciated.
Price includes access to all zoom meetings and downloadable video recordings of the meetings.
The retreat has been priced at an affordable rate with the intention that everybody can participate. However, if you are experiencing financial challenges and cannot afford the regular rate but strongly wish to participate in the retreat, you can apply for the Scholarship Program here. Please apply for the scholarship program as early as possible.
The retreat has been priced at an affordable rate with the intention that everybody can participate. However, if you are experiencing financial challenges and cannot afford the regular rate but strongly wish to participate in the retreat, you can apply for the Scholarship Program here. Please apply for the scholarship program as early as possible.
USD $
Regular Rate $100.00
Sponsor Rate $200.00
"Through Louise's wisdom and deep loving energy I have begun to know Source and Love in a way that I have never experienced in my life before. There is a very special field of energy cultivated when Louise and the group sit together. The retreats are no blissy escape though, the deepening into presence always catalyses powerful healing, which means feeling old tightly held pains and traumas and naturally allowing our loving essence to release these. All of these are beautifully held by Louise's open and kind presence as well as the brave people who share their healing experiences. The groups have opened up something quite profound for me that grows stronger all the time and is helping me heal from childhood trauma. I am really grateful to Louise and her team for helping me reconnect to love and bring purpose and clarity back into my life."
- PATRICK, IRELAND
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"What you seek is right here, right now, beyond thought, beyond emotion and beyond story. You already are that which you seek and with the openness and willingness to gently and honestly observe your behaviours, thoughts and emotions, everything that is not aligned with your highest truth will naturally fall away as you begin to embody and radiate your true self, pure awareness. I invite you to sit with me in pure presence as I support you to connect with the essence of your being which transcends all form, as we become still and deeply allow what is already here."
~ Louise |
"The Dalai Lama once said, "western women will save the world". Louise is definitely one among them. She is a spiritual rockstar, who with her gentle and compassionate approach, introduces you to these priceless and eternal concepts in such a simple and non-intellectual way. At the end of the retreat you will be left wondering if all this is indeed so simple! Attending the retreat was the one best investment of time and money I made in my life!!"
- KUMAR, INDIA
Open Zoom Meeting
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Open Zoom Meeting
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"This weekend retreat was a profound, empowering and inspiring experience. The holistic design of the retreat offers the opportunity of a three days deep dive and exploration of not only the teachings, wisdom and interactions with Louise but also different aspects of spirituality such as silence, conscious movement and dance, witnessing and being witnessed. And all of that in the safe and loving container created by Louise and the sangha, available to tune in from the convenience of your own home wherever in the world. Would recommend this retreat to anyone who longs for recognising themselves as awareness, one and connected with everything there is, deepening into presence and enjoy the oceanic space that we all are in our essence."
- ARTEMIS, GREECE
BIO
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Louise Kay was born in Lancashire, in the north west of England. After graduating from university she worked as an English teacher for 15 years, and during this time began to question the deeper meaning of life. This led her to the path of spirituality, where she found a strong resonance with the teachings of non-duality.
In her early thirties Louise felt a deep call in her heart to visit India, where she found what she had been looking for and experienced a profound spiritual awakening. Shortly afterwards, during a deep meditation, Louise was contacted by a non-physical intelligence and began channeling. She travelled around the world sharing this channeling gift for several years, and during this time experienced a deepening and integration of her initial spiritual awakening. |
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As Louise opened more to this truth a new form of expression revealed itself from deep in her heart and Louise now holds group events online and around the world. Louise's passion is to sit together in presence and hold gentle, unconditionally loving space for all emotions, all sensations and all experiences which arise in the moment in order to support the integration of unresolved energies and allow the unfolding of the divine in all who feel the call.
"Louise is a master at cutting through the dense layers of egoic conditioning and defense mechanisms. Through her soft yet fierce guidance, she lovingly and persistently brings you back to the simplicity and sometimes horror of raw sensation in the body. With her unwavering support, both through her radiant beingness and through her deep honoring of the tenderness of the human experience, she is able to help you navigate trauma that is deeply held in the body whilst simultaneously being deeply rooted in Presence.
Her focus on trauma as a gateway to opening up to the Divine is groundbreaking for the contemporary seeker of Truth. Her approach helps you not only understand but also be able to navigate your own experience. With poignant detail, she hands you your very own invaluable toolbox of medicine for the ails of the awakening journey.
Louise’s sensitivity to the subtleties of how the mental, emotional and physical body responds to the unraveling of the egoic grip is phenomenal. With utter simplicity, and without any superfluous technical terminology or overly complicated explanations, Louise takes you by the hand straight to the ground of direct experience to meet, support and nurture you there.
Louise seamlessly merges the direct human experience with the awakening process; masterfully circumventing any attempts of spiritual bypassing on your part. Her unwavering dedication to unraveling the intricacies of what it means to live as the embodiment of Truth in everyday life and her deep abiding in Beingness invites you to recognize for yourself the non-dual nature of Reality without excluding your very precious and tender human experience."
- GHADIR, EGYPT
The Relationship Between Spiritual Awakening
and the Integration of Childhood Emotional Trauma
Jan 13, 2019
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Most of us as children experienced situations where we felt overwhelmed by our emotions. Maybe a parent yelled at us or hit us, projecting their own emotional traumas onto us. Maybe we met our parents with wide open hearts and they weren't able to meet us back in that love, leaving us feeling unloveable and unworthy. Maybe it was something seemingly small like another child not wanting to play with us. And our gentle hearts were so open. We were so sensitive, innocent, pure, and oh so sweet, and our tender little nervous systems didn't know how to handle these situations. |
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That little one wasn't taught how to be present with emotions, how to gently feel and allow the sensations in the body with unconditional love. In fact, most of us were taught that our emotions are bad and that there was something wrong with us for feeling what we were feeling, that our sensitivity was in fact a sign of weakness and that we should hide it and 'be strong.' And so feelings were repressed and emotional traumas were born.
Different nervous systems respond to these emotional traumas in different ways. Some shut down and became numb, some put up walls of protection around the heart and most develop coping mechanisms, behaviours which allow us to keep on surviving despite the agony that we feel inside, such as numbing our pain with food or other addictive substances and functioning in the world on top of repressed, unprocessed emotions.
When we mature on a spiritual level part of the awakening process that we go through involves meeting and integrating the emotional traumas from our past. We remember how to feel again in a healthy way and we learn how to hold gentle, unconditionally loving space for ourselves and our old pain. For many people it can be scary to open up to these feelings. "What if I open a can of worms and I can't handle it? What if it's too overwhelming? What if it's too painful? What if I open up and then lose my capacity to shut down again? I might have to live in a state of constant overwhelm! Then how will I function in my life?" These fears are a by-product of past emotional trauma. The nervous system remembers how challenging it was to feel overwhelming pain as a child and the mind produces thoughts to try to protect us from feeling that pain again.
In its own sweet way the mind simply wants to keep us safe and it believes that the most effective way to do this is to keep us in control of our experience. While this intention is benevolent, its interference (in the form of thoughts and unconscious beliefs) actually creates resistance to us feeling old energies and it sabotages our healing process by continuously pulling our attention out of our body and into the mind. However, once we understand how the mind's protection mechanism functions we are able to override it by disidentifying from our thoughts. By simply observing our thoughts and turning our attention to the space in which the thoughts arise, our consciousness expands and we are able to see a bigger and much clearer picture. It is from this space of clarity that we can begin to approach the repressed emotions and gently open to them on a physical and energetic level. We do this by becoming fully present and gently opening deeper and deeper to feeling and allowing the sensations in the body as we dive into the infinite void of peaceful, transcendant Being.
Like with everything, as we practice being present with our feelings and opening to them with love, our capacity to do so increases. We are able to stay present with larger and more intense waves of emotion. We don't try to avoid emotions, and nor do we get taken over by them. We surrender to the emotions and become one with them, and by doing so we walk through the gateway of truth, the gateway to our True self, the gateway to the infinite oneness, our true nature, pure awareness.
So don't aim to 'half-open' to feeling in order to stay safe. Dive in head first. Let your heart be smashed into a million pieces. Let it be ripped and torn and broken and shredded. Feel the rawness and the vulnerability. Surrender fully, meet everything with presence, and what you will discover is that you cannot be broken. What you will discover is that you cannot be hurt. What you will discover is the truth of who you are. Eternity itself.
Different nervous systems respond to these emotional traumas in different ways. Some shut down and became numb, some put up walls of protection around the heart and most develop coping mechanisms, behaviours which allow us to keep on surviving despite the agony that we feel inside, such as numbing our pain with food or other addictive substances and functioning in the world on top of repressed, unprocessed emotions.
When we mature on a spiritual level part of the awakening process that we go through involves meeting and integrating the emotional traumas from our past. We remember how to feel again in a healthy way and we learn how to hold gentle, unconditionally loving space for ourselves and our old pain. For many people it can be scary to open up to these feelings. "What if I open a can of worms and I can't handle it? What if it's too overwhelming? What if it's too painful? What if I open up and then lose my capacity to shut down again? I might have to live in a state of constant overwhelm! Then how will I function in my life?" These fears are a by-product of past emotional trauma. The nervous system remembers how challenging it was to feel overwhelming pain as a child and the mind produces thoughts to try to protect us from feeling that pain again.
In its own sweet way the mind simply wants to keep us safe and it believes that the most effective way to do this is to keep us in control of our experience. While this intention is benevolent, its interference (in the form of thoughts and unconscious beliefs) actually creates resistance to us feeling old energies and it sabotages our healing process by continuously pulling our attention out of our body and into the mind. However, once we understand how the mind's protection mechanism functions we are able to override it by disidentifying from our thoughts. By simply observing our thoughts and turning our attention to the space in which the thoughts arise, our consciousness expands and we are able to see a bigger and much clearer picture. It is from this space of clarity that we can begin to approach the repressed emotions and gently open to them on a physical and energetic level. We do this by becoming fully present and gently opening deeper and deeper to feeling and allowing the sensations in the body as we dive into the infinite void of peaceful, transcendant Being.
Like with everything, as we practice being present with our feelings and opening to them with love, our capacity to do so increases. We are able to stay present with larger and more intense waves of emotion. We don't try to avoid emotions, and nor do we get taken over by them. We surrender to the emotions and become one with them, and by doing so we walk through the gateway of truth, the gateway to our True self, the gateway to the infinite oneness, our true nature, pure awareness.
So don't aim to 'half-open' to feeling in order to stay safe. Dive in head first. Let your heart be smashed into a million pieces. Let it be ripped and torn and broken and shredded. Feel the rawness and the vulnerability. Surrender fully, meet everything with presence, and what you will discover is that you cannot be broken. What you will discover is that you cannot be hurt. What you will discover is the truth of who you are. Eternity itself.
"When I entered the retreat, I was feeling all sorts of frustrating distractions making me feel very uncomfortable and so I closed my eyes and focused inside on my breath. When Louise began speaking in the guided meditation, her soft soothing voice began to bring me back into the moment as I could still feel all kinds of conflicting energies pulling me into discomfort. But I just kept listening to her voice and what she was sharing, and before long, I found myself peaceful and quiet in the moment and it suddenly dawned upon me that I was absolutely where I wanted to be - of all places in this entire creation - I did not want to be anywhere else. As I was gently encouraged to not listen to any thoughts or disruptions and just feel my own awareness, that became my experience. It was so sweet to feel the freedom to feel nothing but my awareness and I was able to carry that through much of the meeting. Louise through her profound anchor of clarity and depth of understanding and compassion turned my entire experience around and back to a place of peace where I was able to transcend all the discomfort and mental activity. I am deeply thankful to be in her presence always."
- CARY, USA
Transcending the Mind
Nov 03, 2018
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The mind is in a hurry. It wants answers and it wants them now. "When will such and such happen?" "When will I get that?" For the mind the present moment is incomplete and unsatisfying and it continuously and desperately seeks completeness. It believes that completeness will come at some point in the future when a different emotion is experienced, when certain information has been attained, when a particular status has been reached or when material gain has been achieved. "When will I feel differently?" "When will I finally be happy?" "When will I know my purpose?" "When will I meet my life partner?" The barrage of thoughts never ends and if one question is answered, another appears. If one desire is fulfilled, another appears.
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The only way to end this vicious cycle of seeking and to experience a true and lasting sense of completeness is to transcend the mind by totally letting go of all thoughts and surrendering fully into the present moment. Letting go of thoughts doesn't mean that thoughts stop appearing. It means that they are noticed but not believed in. They are observed but they are not given any power and they are not identified with.
Transcendence of the mind cannot happen in the future. It can only happen in this moment, regardless of how this moment presents itself. Become still right now and notice how this moment feels. Simply perceive whatever is here without any judgement. Observe the thoughts, notice the breath and feel the body. Open to the completeness that is already here. Accept this moment fully, exactly as it is without trying to change anything about it. Maybe that means feeling sadness or heaviness or anger. That's ok. Feel deeper and deeper into the sensations in the body and gently welcome whatever is here. This moment is not a mistake. This moment is perfection. It is only the belief that this moment is flawed that prevents us from experiencing the perfection that is here. When we release ourselves from the grasp of that belief by recognising it, and we have the willingness to embrace our experience fully, we naturally open to the completeness that is already here.
Transcendence of the mind cannot happen in the future. It can only happen in this moment, regardless of how this moment presents itself. Become still right now and notice how this moment feels. Simply perceive whatever is here without any judgement. Observe the thoughts, notice the breath and feel the body. Open to the completeness that is already here. Accept this moment fully, exactly as it is without trying to change anything about it. Maybe that means feeling sadness or heaviness or anger. That's ok. Feel deeper and deeper into the sensations in the body and gently welcome whatever is here. This moment is not a mistake. This moment is perfection. It is only the belief that this moment is flawed that prevents us from experiencing the perfection that is here. When we release ourselves from the grasp of that belief by recognising it, and we have the willingness to embrace our experience fully, we naturally open to the completeness that is already here.